Chapter 19
The moment I stepped off the bus, my father called out my name with such jubilance that strangers turned to look, and he slid past Bobby and Janet to reach me first, his arms spread wide.
It was just past six, still daylight, but his cheeks were rough with stubble, and his neck smelled of sweat and cigars.
Before he let me go, I guessed—correctly—the reason for his good cheer.
“You’ve got a brand-new sister, honey.” He clapped between my shoulders, and the vibration moved down my spine. “Born last night, seven pounds, four ounces. Healthy as a carrot.”
I heard myself congratulate him. I was aware of the corners of my mouth lifting into a smile.
He stepped back to make room for Janet, who sang out my name, attached herself to my side and told me the baby’s name was Shirley Ann, born with red hair the same shade as her own, the same shade as their mother’s.
Bobby hung back, his hands in the pockets of dark slacks too warm for the day. He appeared to study my face.
“Let me get that, honey.” My father took Mae’s suitcase. “How was your trip?” He looked right at me, his expression pleasant. It was as if we’d gone back in time.
“Fine.” My heart drummed. I avoided Bobby’s gaze. “Good to be home, though. How’s Mae?”
“Doing great.” He turned toward the parking lot, swinging my suitcase by the handle.
He was light on his feet, boyish in his movements.
“These two have already seen her and the baby. We’ll take Bobby to work, and then I’ll take you and Janet back to the hospital so you can introduce yourself to Shirley.
” He looked over his shoulder at me and grinned.
“Mae can’t wait to see you. We’ve all missed you, honey. ”
Palm trees lined the pebbled path. Janet was still attached to my left hip, her arms wrapped around my waist. Bobby fell in step on my right.
“What’s Arkansas like?” He made no move to hug me.
“A lot like Missouri.” I squeezed Janet’s shoulder, but I turned my head to look at him. He’d grown at least an inch. “Where do you work? You look spiffy.”
“Florida Theatre. I take tickets.” He waited. “I wrote that to you. I wrote that to you in a letter.”
I told him I’d forgotten. I told him that he looked taller. “You should sit up front,” I said. “You need the leg room more than I do.” I managed a laugh, but I couldn’t look at him. He knew. I was almost sure of it.
My father had already put my suitcase in the trunk, and he opened the back door for me and Janet.
The inside of the car smelled the way it always had, like the polish he used on the seats.
It seemed impossible that just a few months earlier, I rode to the train station in the passenger seat, where Bobby was sitting now.
My father would have only changed the oil once since I’d last looked out the front windshield, terrified of what lay in wait, the porcupine still with me, still growing.
Now it was over, and the porcupine was gone, a baby in someone else’s house.
Janet snuggled up against me and thanked me for taking care of her grandma.
“She said she’s all better because of you.” She rubbed the soft end of one of her braids against the inside of my elbow. “She said you were as nice as I said you’d be. I like your hair like that. Did you make that skirt? I like the little poodle on it.”
I shook my head. I’d pulled the skirt from the donation bin in Cocoa Beach. The widow had pointed out that my hair looked thin in places, and she suggested a shorter cut. She’d been a kind woman, soft spoken. Most evenings, she sat in her car, eating pistachios, while I walked on the beach.
“Did you like my grandma?” Janet whispered. “You can tell me the truth now. I know you couldn’t in your letters.”
I told her yes, I really did like her grandma. My father slowed for a stoplight, humming to himself. Beside him, Bobby stared straight ahead.
Janet traced the outline of my skirt’s poodle. “Does she still have that little pond with ducks? That’s all I remember about her house.”
I told her I felt warm and turned away to roll down my window.
When she asked again, I put my hand under the skirt, where the poodle’s mouth was, and made like it was trying to nibble at her knee.
She squealed and had me do it again, then laughed with her head thrown back.
I thought of her missing father, not dead at all, living happily in Virginia with his German bride.
I would not cross Mae and tell Janet anything—this I already knew.
But now I wondered about this man who’d abandoned this sweet, laughing girl beside me.
Did he have new, half-German children he would not abandon?
Was he a good father to them? When he was bouncing one of them on his knee and telling him he loved them, did he think of his older, red-haired daughter at all?
Did he know she lived in Florida? Or even that her name was Janet?
When Mae first told me the truth, I’d thought of him as coldhearted, a snake shedding his skin.
One might call that moving forward. Or slithering away.
—
When we arrived at the theater, Bobby got out, and Janet asked if I would stay in the back with her for the drive to the hospital.
I was glad to tell her yes, as I still felt uncertain of my father.
I would only know when he and I were alone if his friendliness was a performance.
And I sensed in Janet a true need for my attention in her mother’s absence.
She rode with her head in my lap, telling me about the three badges she’d earned for her junior Scout sash, and about a classmate who’d been gravely injured after walking in front of a swing set, and about the two songs she’d learned to play on her recorder.
I glanced out the window as we moved past Mirror Lake, and my gaze found the pink roof of the library rising above the trees.
“Are you tired of me?” Janet asked. “Do you want me to be quiet?”
I told her I wasn’t, and that I’d missed her. When I looked up, my father caught my eye in the rearview and smiled.
Upon our arrival at the hospital’s main entrance, Janet said she had to go to the bathroom, and she found one the size of a closet with just one toilet.
She closed the door behind her, and I heard the click of the inside lock.
I stood next to my father, my gaze trained on the door.
Ten full seconds of silence passed. Okay, I thought.
He wasn’t angry anymore, but things between us wouldn’t be the same. I clenched my teeth, accepting it.
“Seven pounds, four ounces,” he said. “I remember you were seven pounds even.” When I looked up at him, he smiled at me with what appeared true affection. I understood he was making me an offer. The terms were clear.
“That’s great,” I said. “I can’t wait to meet her.”
When Janet came out of the bathroom, she took my hand, and the three of us proceeded down the corridor with no sign of discord between us. There was plenty of discord within me. I can’t say what my father felt.
“The baby might be in the nursery,” he said.
“But we’ll check with Mae first.” I focused on the smoothness of the linoleum, the steady rhythm of my steps.
Janet told me she was working on her first aid badge.
She’d made a kit, and she wanted to show it to me when we got home.
Home, I thought. Home. But I smelled the same hospital disinfectant smell I’d smelled in Paterson.
We turned a corner, and a nurse behind a desk greeted my father by name.
“Back already?” she teased. “Don’t you need to sleep?” My father laughed and introduced me. The nurse said that she’d heard that I’d been helping a relative in Arkansas. Wasn’t that good of me, she asked, especially as no one wanted to leave Florida in the winter.
“It’s good to be home.” I kept my gaze on her low hairline.
“I bet.” She came around to the front of the desk. “And I know someone’s excited to see you.”
She opened a door to a long room with beds curtained off on each side.
As we walked, I heard the high-pitched cries of one infant and then another.
I was amazed that my feet kept moving, at what I could will them to do.
We were almost at the last set of curtains when the nurse held up her hand for us to wait.
“Mrs. Chesnow? Knock knock. You have visitors. Are you decent?”
The softness of Mae’s reply prepared me: She would have the baby with her.
Yet when the nurse pulled back the curtain, I flinched at the screech of hooks.
It was good that I did this, as it gave me cover, a moment to press my hand to my pounding chest. My father and Janet laughed.
Mae lay in bed, cradling her baby in a blanket.
“Oh Nora! Oh hello!” Her voice was an excited whisper.
She didn’t have her eyebrows drawn on, but her cheeks were flushed, her smile wide.
She glanced down into the blanket, then up at me.
I thought of something Mrs. Lifton once told me about acting.
The secret, she said, was to actually believe, in your own mind, that you were the character you were playing.
You had to forget yourself, and forget the audience, and become the person you were playing.
You had to feel what they were feeling. That was the way, she said, to make real laughter come when laughter was called for, and real tears as well.
So this is what I attempted. Before I crossed the room to take Mae’s hand, I told myself, even in my mind, that I’d really just gotten back from helping her mother in Arkansas, and that I was eager, only eager, to meet my new half sister, because I was still a regular girl.
This mindset, I know, was what allowed me to lean over and kiss Mae’s cheek before peering down at Shirley’s tiny face, which bore no mark or injury.
Her mouth was the size of an almond. A feathery line of lashes laced each closed eye.
When I said she was beautiful, I meant it.